NASHVILLE, Tenn. — When Tim McGraw was a kid, he didn’t always know where he’d get his next meal.
“I remember my mom being a single mom and working,” said McGraw in a recent interview. “I also remember not really having enough money for food sometimes.”
Those memories are part of the reason he taped public service announcements that begin airing this month to raise awareness of hunger in America.
The charity Feeding America says one in six Americans struggle to find enough food to eat, and approximately 5.7 million people receive emergency food assistance from them on any given week.
“It’s so heartbreaking to think of children going hungry, especially in a country as wealthy as ours,” said McGraw, who taped the campaign for Feeding America as part of Hamburger Helper’s Show Your Helping Hand Campaign.
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McGraw feels a personal calling to make a difference in people’s lives outside of his music career. He is the honorary chairman of the Tug McGraw Foundation to help people with brain tumors. The foundation is named after his father, the late baseball star, who died of a brain tumor.
He also founded the organization Neighbor’s Keeper with wife Faith Hill in 2004 to strengthen communities. In addition, the pair helped raise $2.2 million in June from their Nashville Rising all-star benefit concert for middle Tennessee flood victims.
“The given for us, Faith and I both, is we feel like we’ve been very blessed and been given many opportunities, and we’re singers. That’s what we do. There’s a little bit of a guilt part that goes along with having so much for just being a singer,” he said.
Though McGraw’s three daughters with Hill have never known hunger personally, he wants them to know the importance of giving back.
“I think that that’s sometimes how kids get lost, especially kids who grow up in an environment like our kids are growing up in. They don’t ever see outside the window,” he said. “A lot of kids aren’t nearly as fortunate as they are, and if you are that fortunate, then it’s sort of incumbent upon you to help if you can.”
